Federated Document Access System with Consent Management

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Solution Overview

Problem

Smaller businesses and individual users face challenges in accessing and sharing documents stored in personal storage mediums, leading to inefficiencies and difficulties in document management.

Innovation Solution

A federated access and query system that utilizes a user account service, invitation service, consent management, and indexing service to enable secure and private access to documents stored in personal storage mediums.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If documents are stored in individual personal storage mediums, then user privacy and data security are improved, but document accessibility and search efficiency deteriorate

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata securityVSAvoiddocument accessibility

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The system divides the storage architecture into segmented personal storage mediums, where each user maintains independent control over their own data while the federated search system provides coordinated access capabilities across all segments without compromising individual security boundaries

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces a federated search system as an intermediary layer that mediates between individual personal storage mediums and users seeking documents. This intermediary enables cross-storage search and access coordination while preserving the security and privacy of individual storage mediums through controlled access mechanisms

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Productivity

If a common data store is established, then document sharing and access efficiency are improved, but system complexity and resource requirements worsen

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedocument sharing efficiencyVSAvoidsystem complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The federated search system provides multi-functional capabilities by simultaneously supporting search across multiple personal storage mediums, maintaining user privacy controls, enabling document sharing, and providing enterprise-level collaboration features without requiring a dedicated common data store infrastructure

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Solution Approach 2:

Users maintain self-service control over their personal storage mediums, including the ability to grant or revoke access permissions, manage shared documents, and control what portions of their storage are accessible to others, eliminating the need for centralized administrative management

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

3Reliability

If manual search across multiple personal storage mediums is performed, then user control over data is maintained, but time consumption and operational efficiency worsen

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveuser controlVSAvoidsearch time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary indexing and metadata extraction from personal storage mediums in advance, creating a searchable framework that enables rapid document retrieval without requiring users to manually search through entire storage contents, thus reducing search time while preserving user control

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS12326956B2Method and system of providing access to documents stored in personal storage mediums

Publication Date: 2025.06.10 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

A system and method for providing access to data stored in a personal storage medium includes receiving a search query from a searching entity for searching for the data, determining if the data includes data stored in the personal storage medium of a user, upon determining that the data includes data stored in the personal storage medium, determining if the user has consented to provide access to the data to the searching entity and if so, searching a search index associated with the personal storage medium for the data, and providing one or more search results or a notification that no search results were identified to the searching entity.